COMPACT MULTI-MODE UWB
MICROSTRIP FILTER USING MEANDER
RESONATOR
Tianliang Zhang, Liguo Zhou, Kai Yang, Wei Dang,
Kezhao Hua, Changlin Yang, and Peng Chen
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Electronic
Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China;
Corresponding author: ztl@uestc.edu.cn
Received 31 December 2015
ABSTRACT: In this paper, traditional microstrip resonator is mean-
dered to construct a compact multi-mode resonator (MMR). The mean-
der resonator is very simple but convenient for ultra-wide band (UWB)
passband filter. And then, a UWB microstrip filter with six transmission
poles in the passband is achieved by using only two resonators. The fil-
ter has an amplitude frequency response with a passband from 1.8 GHz
to 4.7 GHz, the simulated return loss in passband is better than 220dB,
and the measured one is better than 219dB. The tested insertion loss at
center frequency is about 0.38 dB. Methods of adjusting the bandwidth
of this new kind of UWB filter is also discussed in this paper.
V
C
2016
Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:2026–2029,
2016; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/
mop.29957
Key words: microstrip filter; ultra-wide band; multi-mode resonator;
compact resonator
1. INTRODUCTION
With the rapid development of wireless communication technol-
ogy and wireless multimedia services, ultra-wide band (UWB)
technology has attracted more and more attention from the
researchers. Multi-mode resonator (MMR) method [1–9] is one
of important methods for UWB band-pass filters (BPFs). The
MMR method mainly uses multiple resonant modes distributed
evenly over the entire UWB. In Ref. [1], a MMR with step-
impedance resonators (SIR) is originally presented to construct a
UWB filter. The MMR consists of one half-wavelength (k/2)
low-impedance line section in the center and two identical k/4
high-impedance line sections at the two sides. Up to now, there
are many works having been done following the lecture [1]. For
instance, [6] employed short-circuited stubs at the input/output
to improve the selectivity and out-of-band characteristics of the
UWB filter [7]. designed a two-stage SIR-type UWB filter after
modifying the structure of low-impedance line [8] used a shunt
short-circuited stub at the center of a half-wavelength resonator
to improve the out-of-band rejection [9]. bended low-impedance
line section of the resonator to reduce the horizontal circuit size
of the filter, and added a folded stepped-impedance stub to the
center transmission line of the MMR to improve the selectivity
[10] and [11] transformed the structure of the SIR to design
multi-band bandpass filter by embedding short-circuit stubs or
loading open-stub line [12]. designed a bandpass filter with high
selectivity and a wide stopband by optimizing the parameters of
Ref. [11] to change the resonant frequencies of the even modes.
From the references mentioned above, it can be known that
the harmonic resonant frequencies of MMR can be adjusted to
targeted points mainly through adjusting the perturbations which
are added to traditional half-wavelength resonator. In this paper,
traditional microstrip resonator is simply meandered to construct
compact MMR, and then changes the internal field distribution
to change the harmonic frequencies of the resonator mainly
through changing the internal structure parameter of resonators,
without using SIR structure or any additional perturbations. Fur-
thermore, the relative position of the fundamental passband and
the harmonic passbands, the distribution of the transmission
poles in each above passband can be simultaneously adjusted.
When the fundamental passband and the harmonic passbands
are completely overlapped, UWB filter can be achieved. As an
example, in this paper, two similar resonators are used to con-
struct a second-order UWB filter with six transmission poles in
the passband. This method also has: fewer challenges in design,
simpler structure; the microstrip line width of all sections of the
resonator can be same totally or be different as SIR; and good
return loss in passband can be achieved for a UWB filter.
2. A COMPACT MICROSTIP RESONATOR
In this paper, a meander resonator structure is proposed and
shown in Figure 1(a). According to the reference [13,14], as
shown in Figure 1(b), the coupling between two resonators is
pure electric coupling. It is easy to achieve strong coupling
between the resonators, which will make for designing broad-
band filters. After the resonator twists and turns, it is also bene-
ficial to the miniaturization of the filter.
In Figure 1(a), all the initial size parameters are set as fol-
lows: w
1
5 0.27 mm, g
1
5 0.60 mm, g
2
5 0.60 mm,
Figure 1 The compact resonator and the coupling between resonators. (a) compact resonator. (b) strong electric coupling. (c) coupling resonators
tapped with input and output
2026 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 8, August 2016 DOI 10.1002/mop